I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to hunting equipment, and more particularly to a device for facilitating erection of a hunter's tree stand.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
As is explained in U.S. Pat. No. 7,717,232, to Butcher, the teachings of which are hereby incorporated by reference, hunters after deer and other game often employ a tree stand to position themselves off the ground and out of sight of prey. The tree stand generally comprises a ladder formed of plural ladder segments that can be joined together to reach a desired length. A platform is joined to an upper ladder rung and a safety railing and seat are joined to the upper ends of the ladder's side rails as shown in the Butcher '232 patent.
The assembled tree stand may typically be 20 feet or more in length and may weigh about 100 pounds. Hence, it is somewhat of a challenge for a single person to lift and position a tree stand against a support tree. Furthermore, the hunter must mount the ladder of the tree stand in order to safely secure it with rope or straps to a tree trunk against which it is made to lean. Until it is secured, there is a risk that the tree stand assembly may shift and potentially fall, causing injury to the hunter.
The Liu, U.S. Pat. No. 7,458,563, describes a hoist device that involves a crank-operated winch mechanism adapted to be strapped to the trunk of a tree and having a cable deployed over a pulley that is suspended from a tree limb at an elevated location on a tree trunk. The free end of the cable is adapted to be coupled to the safety rail of the tree stand and by turning the crank of the winch, the tree stand is made to assume a vertical disposition along side of the tree trunk.
The Liu invention has several drawbacks. First, the ability to suspend the pulley from the tree limb requires that the hunter find a tree with a lower branch at the desired height. Then a degree of skill is required for the hunter, standing on the ground, to lob a rope to which the pulley is attached over the selected tree limb, especially when the winch cable is looped about the pulley as it must be.
Another tree stand hoist is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,350,769 to Dorzok. It comprises a long pole having an elongate member attached at its distal end where the elongate member is provided with a plurality of regularly spaced apertures along the length dimension thereof. Affixed to the end of the elongate member is a stationary, folding, articulated arm. Slidably mounted on the elongate member is a movable arm and a spring-actuated locking pin arrangement that can be used to lock the movable arm at a selected location along the length of the elongate member with the locking pin inserted into one of the apertures on the elongate member. In this manner, the elongate member can be raised to a desired height by means of the pole and the movable arm slid along the elongate member so the tree trunk is captured between the stationary arm and the movable arm. Once the assembly is clamped to a tree, a rope or cable that is disposed over a pulley suspended from the movable arm can be used to raise a tree stand to a vertical disposition against the tree trunk. The spring actuated locking pin is manipulated by the user pulling on a further rope to thereby extract the pin from the aperture it is occupying and allowing the movable arm to be moved.
While the device the '769 patent overcomes drawbacks of the Liu '563 patent, it has drawbacks of its own. The mechanism is overly complicated, costly to manufacture and requires considerable manual dexterity to deploy. Since the stationary arm and movable arm must clamp to the tree so not as to slide down as the tree stand is being raised, these arms must be substantial and, hence, the amount of weight cantilevered from the end of the pole makes placement thereof by a person holding, say, a 20 foot long pole, quite difficult to say the least.
Accordingly, a need exists for a hunter's tree stand hanger that is inexpensive to manufacture, easy to transport to a hunting site and assemble and easy to deploy and use. The present invention provides just such a hoist mechanism.